Preschool Playdough Favorites

[ding] Hey everyone! It's Sheryl from Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds. Today, I'm going  to talk about play dough. Recently on Instagram, I did a poll to see how many of you use play dough  during centers versus other times in your day, versus not at all. And about 53% of you said  that you use your play dough during centers time, and then another large percentage said  you use it other times during your day, and then there was a small percentage that didn't  use play dough at all. I'm one of the 53%

that uses play dough during centers time, and I have  a lot of reasons why, but I have two that are the main reasons. One, because it's calming,  and especially at the beginning of the year, the children who have a hard time coming in and  engaging right away, they often will go to the play dough table first as a way of kind of warming  up to what's going on, and it's so soothing as they play with the play dough. They knead the play  dough and roll it, and that's also why I keep our play dough

table near our door. It's the first  thing the children see when they come in, because we start our morning with free choice centers  time. The second reason why I love play dough is that it is one of the best ways, in my opinion, of  working fine motor skills, because if you look at how much the hands have to squeeze the play dough,  and the fingers are working, and they're rolling. They're using the palms of their hands, tips of  their fingers, and then also the tools, using the tools is also

fine motor. So those are my two main  reasons for having play dough. The next thing is, what type of play dough do I use? Now, I have  tried several different commercial brands, and I don't... I just don't care for them, and the  children don't, either. They're much harder to use, first of all. They just don't have the  softness that homemade play dough does. So, I do have a stash of these, just in case something  happens with our homemade play dough, but I really prefer using what we make, and

I will drop a link  in this video's description. It is my play dough collection post. The next question, whenever I  do my setups, when I showed them on Instagram, our morning setups. One of the questions that you  ask is, you notice what I keep the play dough on. Often I will use our white trays. You've also  seen these at an art table, you've seen these at our activity table. I actually use these  all over the classroom. Another thing I do is, I laminate paper. So you can just take some  cards

tock, any color that you want, and you laminate it, and you have one for each setting.  And I also have specialty play dough mats. These are printables that I have on my website. This  is one, it's a counting, and it is in color, and it's also in black and white, and I'll drop  a link to this in this video's description. And these can also be used at the activity table. You  can use pom-poms with them if you'd rather do that than play dough, but they are great for play dough  because they can al

so roll the play dough out to make the number. If you are already thinking about  Fall, for those of you who are watching this live, I have similar with the fall theme. So again, the  links to these are in this video's description. As far as tools, oh my gosh. When I went to  collect the tools for this, for play dough, I realized I could go on and on and on. I  actually... there's so many things that you can add to the play dough table, and I tend to go  outside the box a lot, but let me show yo

u some favorites, and you probably have a lot of these  in your own preschool right now. The first thing, of course, is rolling pins. I always have rolling  pins at our play dough table. And, some of the rolling pins also, like these, they don't have  the handles on them. It encourages them to use their palms. And then we use little cutters. We  have these in wood, we have plastic ones. And then this is- these are a favorite. These little  pizza cutters are a favorite! They love slicing the play

dough. Another thing I absolutely  love are these little silicone baking cups, and when I put these out, the children like to  pretend that they're making cupcakes, so they'll often roll the play dough into balls and put  them inside. In fact, I'll even take sometimes- We have a little play microwave downstairs.  I'll bring it up and I'll put it on the table, and the children will pretend, they'll put these  into the oven to pretend they're baking. That's a hit. We use alphabet stamps, and we a

lso have them  in the little cookie cutter style. And of course, you can use cookie cutters, and we- these are all,  I think, these are pretty much always at our play dough table. I just like to switch out the theme  of it. So example, this is- you could do stars for the Fourth of July. You can do apples during  your Apple theme, leaves during your Leaf theme. Oh! If you have straws, they love to press straws  into the play dough, and they also absolutely love to put little popsicle sticks. And

if you have  these little pegs, we have these. These are a little fine motor activity. We have scissors, and,  oh, here's another one. Here's another little peg, a different shape. They can do it face down,  or they can do it with a little knob coming down. Little scoopers. Take your blocks!  Those are always fun to put in play dough. You can use shape, little shape blocks, and  anything that stamps. Another thing that is a huge hit is pressing animals into the play  dough. They love this, and I

will switch it out like during Farm, we'll have farm animals.  You can do ocean animals doing your ocean theme, but this is always a hit. So these are just some  of what I use at the play dough table. Like I said, the list goes on and on and on. You really  can be creative with this. Think about anything that you can press into play dough. We've done  citrus squeezers, which, I couldn't find ours, but that is a favorite that I like to introduce  about halfway through the school year, because th

ey love learning how to put a ball of play dough  inside it and press it and squeeze it. Same with garlic presses. They love candles. Often, if I  see candles on sale, little birthday candles, they love to pretend to put those in there.  One more question that I had recently got was, how do you manage the play dough table so that the  play dough stays at the play dough table? And that can be a challenge. So, especially with younger  children, they are known for walking around, just picking up wh

at they've been working  on, and just move it somewhere else. And I understand that, and don't mind that for a lot  of the centers, but for play dough, I have a rule from the very first day. It has to stay at the  play dough table, because we'll find it all over the place, and then it gets inside things, and  we can't get it out. So, it'll happen though. It happens year after year, where the first month of  school, I will find the play dough being carried, and I just redirect the child back to t

he play  dough table and say, the play dough stays at the play dough table. So I really try to keep an eye  on that, and we just worked through it, and as the year progresses, they learn play dough stays  at the play dough table. If we see the play dough fall on the floor, we know to pick it up, because  if you don't pick up that play dough, it never fails. Someone's shoe lands in it, and that's  when it gets tracked throughout the classroom and into our carpet. So, we do need to keep a close  e

ye on keeping the play dough on the table, not moving from center to center, and not falling on  the carpet. So those are just a few tips for our favorite play dough, favorite play dough mats, and  favorite play dough tools. Thanks for watching! [Music] "One... two... three..." "Four, five, six, seven..."